Miu Shanghai

Replacing what was once Chop Chop in Mall of the Emirates is Asian restaurant Miu Shanghai. The setting is arresting and inviting. Decked out with a vibrant mix of vintage Chinese photos and traditionally shaped screens (classically in wood, but here in vibrant colours), this is an attractive restaurant. Adding to this charming setting is the view over Ski Dubai, if you dine by the windows.

Waiting at the unattended reception desk for some time, as waitresses stood around chatting to one another, proved to be a fairly cold welcome to the restaurant. While service was efficient (in the sense that food orders were brought to the table quickly) it felt automated, unengaging and at a fairly average, functional level. You’d be forgiven for thinking, from both the restaurant’s name and the décor, that it is a Chinese concept. However, a quick glance of the pan-Asian menu will soon cure you of the assumption, since the list spans sushi, dim sum, kimchi and Hawaiian-inspired recipes.

From that list, the New York maki, stuffed with salmon and crab sticks tasted acceptable, but were quite a basic, Americanised version of sushi, containing very sweet rice and cream cheese. Around the rolls was an interesting twist on the usual nori seaweed, with a thin soy-paper, but it was slightly rubbery. The dim sum basket, which offered two each of a mixture of Chinese-inspired steamed dumplings from the menu, were largely disappointing – the dough casings mostly mushy, messy (and obviously from frozen); the fillings stodgy and dull in flavour, aside from a pleasant shredded mushroom recipe.

A main course of ‘foil salmon yaki’ arrived looking unappetising, as a messy-looking aluminium-trough on the plate. The vegetables looked and tasted dull and lifeless, and the sea of sauce was overly sweet and sickly. However, the salmon fillets themselves proved pleasant, as if gently poached in this sweet-sticky concoction, and flavoursome and moist as a result.

Despite appearances, which at Miu Shanghai are colourful, fun and distinctly Chinese, this is very much an ordinary, mall based, blanket-all-Asian dining experience. It is convenient if you happen to be shopping, and has an attractive setting, but its charms end there.